


Measuring Up

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 12:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21458020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: Colin compares himself to some other Tinkers.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Measuring Up

Colin looked down at the new prototype that he had just constructed for his Halberd, and scowled. It was trash. It was absolute garbage. He hated it, and he hated the fact that he had made something as atrocious as whatever that thing sitting in front of him was. It was Tinkertech only by technicality; everything else about it, though, looked like it had been designed by a caveman rather than Armsmaster, leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, and - supposedly - one of the world's foremost Tinkers. Colin severely doubted that he should be considered even in the top one hundred of all Tinkers, though, as he stared at the Halberd prototype. What a piece of junk. Colin felt the urge to grab it and break it over his knee, but he resisted that angry impulse; as much as he wanted to take his frustration out on the object, he knew that it would be better to keep it intact so that he could both examine his mistakes and strip it for still-functioning parts. Instead, he grabbed the coffee cup sitting on his bench with growl, and threw it at the wall of his workshop; the ceramic shattered with a satisfying noise, as some of the little remaining coffee splattered along the metal tile.

It didn't help all that much, of course; the little outbursts of rage that Colin allowed himself _never_ helped, no matter what or how much he destroyed in an attempt to get his pent up fury out. That didn't mean that he didn't keep trying, of course; no matter how stoic and impassive he tried to present himself, Colin Wallis knew that he had anger issues, and the number of Tinker experiments that he had filed with the PRT as "destructive failures" was evidence to that. He felt a little bit guilty, of course, that he wasted so much PRT money by breaking the materials and tools that they sent him, but whenever he thought about the mere fact that he had the full backing of the PRT for his Tinker work, Colin only felt his frustration tick up several notches; he had _the full backing of the PRT_ in his experiments, had all of the resources, all of the equipment, all of the workspace he could possibly have wanted, needed, or asked for, and yet garbage like that new Halberd prototype were all he could make? What kind of Tinker was he, if _that_ was all that he could accomplish? For a moment, he reconsidered the possibility of taking the prototype and breaking it again the wall like he had done with his coffee cup.

Instead, he opted to collapse down into his chair, burying his face into his hands and letting out an exhausted sigh. He hadn't checked how long he had been in the Tinker fugue making the new Halberd, and he wasn't particularly inclined to, not at that moment; it would be too shameful for Colin to know that he had spent twelve hours - or even longer - for the result of all that time to be nothing but a pile of trash. He idly hoped that Dragon hadn't been watching him work, _wasn't_ watching him at that exact moment; he always got frustrated with her whenever he found out that she had been spying on him, but the other Tinker would always just tease him and keep doing it either way. Colin wasn't particularly angry with her about it, especially not since Dragon was one of the few people - the only person? - that he could consider anything resembling a friend; it just embarrassed him that she did, could, or would see him in moments like that, at his weakest and most emotional. Colin didn't like to be emotional. He firmly believed that allowing pathos to guide one's actions always resulted with inefficient decision making; considering that Colin's Tinker specialty was miniaturization and efficiency, he had a special stake in that sort of thing.

But Dragon... God, to think that he worked so closely with her all the time, the woman that was, with no doubt in anybody's mind, the single best Tinker on the entire planet. Even if Colin really _was_ up there in the top ten Tinkers or what have you, he was still miles, _miles_ below what Dragon was. She had created countless battlesuits of amazing design, had created containment foam, had created much of the PRT's computer and network systems; she administered the _Birdcage_, for Christ's sake. Oh, but, of course, Colin had helped her design the program to track the Endbringers. Wow, great job, Colin, really managing to keep up with Dragon there. Shitty power armor and crappy Halberds really managed to shine next to all of that, too, didn't they?

There was Hero, too. _The_ Hero, the original Tinker, the Tinker's Tinker. Ever since Colin had triggered, he had idolized the long-deceased man. Maybe Hero had been a bit facetious, a bit farcical, but he had also been a man whose inventions, confidence, and valor allowed him to live up to the name that some tried to say was too self-aggrandizing; as far as Colin was concerned, the man had deserved not only the name Hero, but was great enough that he could have had Legend, or Majestic, or Triumph, or Amazing, or any other so-called "self-aggrandizing" name attached to him. He had seen the footage of what Siberian had done to him - had seen it more than once, as much as it churned him up inside each time he saw it - and had silently sworn to himself each time he watched the video that - if given the chance - he would make that monstrous woman pay for Hero's death.

But as much as Colin looked up to the late Hero, he also felt himself always in the dead man's shadow, albeit in a different way than he did with Dragon. Unlike Colin's friend, Hero was an "on-the-ground" Tinker, in the same way that most parahumans of that category were. Hero had worn power armor, use rayguns, and fought in the thick of things, same as Armsmaster did; more importantly, Hero had done it all far, _far_ better than Armsmaster ever had, ever did, or ever could, with the late Tinker's career having been cut short only due to the terrible unknown element that the Siberian had been on that tragic September day a decade ago. Colin had actually brought those insecurities up to Dragon before, in a moment of particular vulnerability for him, but the other Tinker had simply brushed him off, telling Colin that he had nothing to be concerned about, that Armsmaster was an exemplary Tinker that everybody held up as an exemplar of what a Protectorate tinker should be; Colin knew, of course, that Dragon - as sweet and dear as she was - was more than likely telling him those exaggerations for the sake of making him feel better, for the sake of helping him cheer up, but that she knew as well as Colin did that Armsmaster was a failure of a Tinker, that nobody could or should ever look up to or idolize him in the same way that he and so many others did for Hero.

All of his inventions, and none of them could compare to anything that either Dragon or Hero could make. Nothing but junk like the Halberd prototype that was still sitting on his workbench, almost like it was staring at him, _mocking_ him. Colin felt his hand twitch, his arm raise as if to go for the piece of tech and do to it like he had been considering for the past several minutes. To some degree, Colin knew that it wasn't fair. Tinkers didn't decide what they could invent, or how useful the things that they invented were, or how functional they were; the unsavory truth for Colin and every other Tinker was that their _powers_ invented things, not the Tinker themselves. Yes, Dragon and Hero had made countless, amazing pieces of Tinkertech, but it wasn't anything that either of them had _really_ been responsible for, after all; if a person played high-level baseball by having another person attach puppet strings to them and direct all of their actions, could they _really_ say that they were good at the sport?

Colin buried his face in his hands again, a muffled yell being shouted into his palms. He knew that he wasn't being fair to Dragon or to Hero, or any other accomplished Tinkers; he was annoyed, frustrated, angry, and was finding ways to direct all of those emotions at other people, so that he wouldn't have to deal with any of it himself. He considered for a moment, though, all of the Tinkers whose powers were underwhelming in various ways. Just in Brockton Bay, there was Leet, the poor kid; villain or otherwise, Colin could feel some degree of sympathy, knowing that the other Tinker's inventions - no matter how amazing they were - had a tendency to just spontaneously malfunction on the kid in various ways. Was Colin being ungrateful, in regard to his powers? His equipment may have been useless - _completely_ fucking useless, more like it - but at least it never exploded in his face; he should have been grateful for that much, at least, right? Then there was Trainwreck, the Tinker with the gang of drug addicts known as the Merchants. Colin knew that the other Tinker worked with scrap, as some sort of improvisation specialist, being able to make new equipment on the fly in the middle of battle... But none of it was very spectacular, and no matter how much time Trainwreck spent on something, he could never make Tinkertech that really shone. Maybe his Halberd was nothing but a piece of shit, but Colin tried to consider that at least he could make a _shiny_ piece of shit like his signature weapon.

Colin stood up, making his way over to where the coffee machine in his workshop was. He took another cup from a shelf above the machine, being careful as to not break _that_ one, as well; someone in the PRT accounting department was sure to take issue if they saw Colin ordering a dozen coffee cups every month, after all. Pouring the lukewarm drink into the mug, Colin let his mind process through all his thoughts again. Tinkers. Dragon. Hero. Leet. Trainwreck. Better than him? Equal to him? Worse than him? Did it even matter, so long as he accomplished what he needed to accomplish? As long as he could stand up against villains and Endbringers and everything in-between, did it matter how he compared to all of those other Tinkers out there? The cup began to spill over, and Colin cursed as he grabbed a paper towel and cleaned his mess up, sipping at the coffee mug to drain the liquid to a stable level. Christ, he was so incompetent that he couldn't even pour coffee correctly, and yet he was expected to be one of the world's best Tinkers and lead the Brockton Bay Protectorate? If Colin was the best they managed to find for those jobs, then the world must really have been hard up for heroic Tinkers.

With another sigh, he returned over to his workbench, placing the cup where the shattered one had been; Colin made a mental note to make sure and clean the ceramic shards up before he left, because he could at least hopefully manage that little task. Crossing his arms and staring down at the Halberd prototype again, he felt his power begin to work. Ideas flooded his head, ideas that he knew weren't his own, but ideas that would be up to him to effect, even so; ideas of how to improve the Halberd, of the fact that moving the power cell over there would increase energy flow efficiency, of the fact that placing the EMP generator there would allow for a greater spread, or how if he did that, or the other thing, or maybe...

As Colin felt himself enter the Tinker fugue again, he wondered if he would finally create something that he could be satisfied with. If the invention that came out of the other side of his fugue wasn't up to his standards, wasn't able to compare to what Dragon and Hero had done, wasn't enough to make Colin Wallis feel as if he even deserved to be called a Tinker at all? Well, with any hope on his part - with any futile, hollow hope - it wouldn't come to that. Colin knew that it would, though. It always came to that. It always, always came to that.


End file.
